M. K. Gandhi
letter, but a great deal of friction with the British Government was engendered, resulting in Imperial intervention at the time of the War, when resident Indians, as British subjects, were promised complete redress of their grievances.
In Natal, a British Colony, the position had been complicated by the grave prejudice aroused by the presence of large numbers of Indian labourers brought at the instance of the European Colonists under indenture, and an agitation had arisen for the exclusion of free Asiatic immigration and the disfranchisement of all Asiatics. It became a question whether this was to be accomplished by specifically racial legislation or by general enactment differentially administered. The conflict of views represented by these two methods raged for sometime, but at last, thanks to the statesmanship of Mr. Chamberlain, in 1897, the second method was adopted, and the famous "Natal Act" passed, imposing an educational and not a racial test. From then onwards, in Natal, racial legislation was a thing of the past, and hence the first signs of renewed trouble arose in the Transvaal, where the principle of statutory equality had not been accepted, owing to a different political conception of the status of coloured people.
In the re-settlement that took place after the War, it was hoped that the burdens would be removed.
